US Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets (bloomberg.com) 162
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. Justice Department's decision that all internet gambling is illegal will cast a pall on the industry as businesses and state lotteries evaluate the implications of the change and the government's plans to enforce it. The U.S. now says federal law bars all internet gambling, reversing its position from 2011 that only sports betting is prohibited under a law passed 50 years earlier. Although the federal law specifically prohibits transmission of wagers and related information across state lines, the Justice Department's new interpretation will impact all online gambling because as a practical matter it's difficult to guarantee that no payments are routed through other states, said Aaron Swerdlow, an attorney with Glaser Weil Fink Howard Avchen & Shapiro LLP in Los Angeles.
The reversal was prompted by the department's criminal division, which prosecutes illegal gambling. The opinion issued about seven years ago that the 1961 Wire Act only banned sports gambling was a misinterpretation of the statute, according to a 23-page opinion by the department's Office of Legal Counsel dated Nov. 2 and made public Monday. The new reading of the law probably will be tested in the courts as judges may entertain challenges to the government's view of the law's scope, the Justice Department said. It may also affect states that began selling lottery tickets online after the 2011 opinion, as well as casinos that offer online gambling. In contrast, the Supreme Court last May "cleared the way [...] for states to legalize sports betting, striking down a 1992 federal law that had prohibited most states from authorizing sports betting."
The reversal was prompted by the department's criminal division, which prosecutes illegal gambling. The opinion issued about seven years ago that the 1961 Wire Act only banned sports gambling was a misinterpretation of the statute, according to a 23-page opinion by the department's Office of Legal Counsel dated Nov. 2 and made public Monday. The new reading of the law probably will be tested in the courts as judges may entertain challenges to the government's view of the law's scope, the Justice Department said. It may also affect states that began selling lottery tickets online after the 2011 opinion, as well as casinos that offer online gambling. In contrast, the Supreme Court last May "cleared the way [...] for states to legalize sports betting, striking down a 1992 federal law that had prohibited most states from authorizing sports betting."
Only applies to online gambling crossing state bou (Score:2, Interesting)
This /. article leaves out key pieces of information quoted in the source: this is an opinion (and NOT a law or regulaton!) and impacts forms of online gambling *crossing state lines* ONLY.
As long as online gambling does not cross state boundaries AND the state itself has regulated online gambling, such as New Jersey, online gambling is perfectly legal but ONLY on those sites regulated and approved by appropriate regulators. Other states where itâ(TM)s perfectly legal to gamble online include Nevada, D
Re: Only applies to online gambling crossing state (Score:5, Interesting)
Practical Difficulty (Score:3)
The article does not explain why it would be difficult as a practical matter to ensure that payments do not get routed through other states. Can anyone clarify what they mean by this? What exactly would need to be done, and how difficult would it be?
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Every use of the credit card has to be legal.
Should a US website be created and then attract users in the USA, then the US gov can "find" that same site too.
Block the easy way to move money on the internet, track all the US sites.
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They can also be extremely mean, as in get the all the losers money back, less a recovery fee and block the business from claiming any future debts. Make the bets not count over statute of limits durations ie seven years, if you lost money to an internet gaming site, they can go back, get that money back and give some of it back to you, less recovery costs. Blame the dicks at Electronic Arts, getting children to gamble to scam them of their pocket money, seriously, oh yeah, they will be coming for you next,
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Re:Practical Difficulty (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm wondering at how wide the US is going to start casting its net on this - VISA, MasterCard not allowed to facilitate online betting anywhere in the world because they are US companies and online betting is illegal under US law?
If you think that's reaching, I suggest reading up on the case of the Danish man buying Cuban cigars from a German seller - the US confiscated the payment as it used the SWIFT network, and Cuba is under a US embargo...
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This is a good example of what happens when Congress fails to keep up with the times and pass appropriate legislation. Online gambling has been with us for years and yet the only federal law we have to go off of predates the internet and home computers by decades. They have had ample time to pass a law that clarifies this but haven't done so. Its not just gambling either but with computing in general and other industries Congress's inability to stay with the times has lead to similar issues where regulatory
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whats probably more important is that you're not betting against other people in other states.
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SWIFT (the network that actually does inter-bank transfers) crosses state lines. So unless your bank's processing center and the destination bank's processing center happen to be in the same state, the transaction will cross state lines.
Also, credit card purchases are not actually processed in your state (unless you're in SD or DE). Even then the money from the credit card company will probably cross state lines when it is sent to the seller's bank.
Finally, your bank may contract out payment processing of
Now, we need an opinion on loot boxes (Score:1)
If this law applies to loot box gambling, there will be a very large market with many customers that no longer welcomes unscrupulous games.
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I guess that closes the lid on those boxes, too. Let's hope it does.
Stocks (Score:5, Insightful)
So investing in the stock market, or anything for that matter, is illegal?
Investing in anything has a risk/probabilistic component. Therefore it is a form of gambling. Well isnâ(TM)t it?
And donâ(TM)t retort with BS that playing blackjack online is 100% luck based .. it isnâ(TM)t. I mean, let me know randomly how clicking âoehit meâ for everything works out. All gambling takes some amount of skill to improve your odds.
Re:Stocks (Score:4, Interesting)
You might see similarity between the stock market and gambling, but does the same similarity exist between your savings account and gambling?
Re: Stocks (Score:1)
Not as long as my balance is under $100,000.
Re:Stocks (Score:5, Funny)
The stock market is like the old joke about poker.
Q: Is poker a game of luck and chances?
A: Not the way we play it.
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It is from the 1935 film "Mississippi"
The character is Commodore Jackson, played by none-other-than W.C. Fields, who over his acting career played many characters that were "gamblers", which I put in quotes because in the films, the games were always crooked, and he was in on it.
Re: Stocks (Score:2, Insightful)
Stocks, trading, and investing are essentially a form of legalized gambling. Not sure why OP is rated as a troll, it's a fully legitimate point.
Sure, it has its own set of nomenclature but it's throwing money at something with probability that money will either grow or shrink, like all gambling.
One may argue that it contributes back to society, the again, so do winners in traditional gambling scenarios who push their money back into the economy.
The real difference I see is that stocks allow for creating ris
Re:Stocks (Score:5, Informative)
No, the legal definition of gambling specifically excludes any activity governed by the securities laws (as that term is defined in section 3(a)(47) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934[1] for the purchase or sale of securities (as that term is defined in section 3(a)(10) of that Act); or any over-the-counter derivative instrument; as well as insurance contracts [cornell.edu]
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Absolutely correct!!! Ding! Ding!
Stocks are an excluded (from anti-gambling laws) form of gambling.
If stocks we never considered gambling, there would be no need for a law
to legalize their use as an investment (that is, make their use an exclusion).
Really, people are you that gullible?
CAP === 'dispels'
Re: Stocks (Score:2)
Re:Stocks (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to make it illegal is stupid, since it won't stop people. It just drives everything underground and gives criminals another profitable enterprise in which they can engage.
Re:Stocks (Score:5, Interesting)
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Actually what you're talking about is really only applicable to gambling and stocks as entire ecosystems, yes over time all stocks generally head upwards, but for unfortunate individual investors, no amount of time will change the fact that they are bankrupt
The true distinction between stocks/investing and gambling is that gambling by definition is a game of chance where the odds are entirely arbitrary. Stocks on the other hand have loads of information to inform what choices you make in them and while the
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Don't forget insurance. That's just another form of gambling as well when it comes down to it.
There is one important pragmatic difference: You don't see very many insurance addicts blowing their family fortunes on premiums.
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There is one important pragmatic difference: You don't see very many insurance addicts blowing their family fortunes on premiums.
But you do see folks blowing the heads off insured people for fortunes.
Do you want to bet on that? (Score:5, Funny)
Trying to make it illegal is stupid, since it won't stop people.
Really? Do you want to bet on that?
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Health insurance is not really insurance and out side of the usa it's more of an Health plan or add on Health plan
Yeah, it kind of is (Score:3)
A friend's company went on the lookout for investors for a new product and it's crazy how many rules there are on both sides of the equation. The only thing that makes gambling any dif
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You can't for instance, as a small investor, just pick a random company to give money to.
What? Of course you can. You pick one, walk in, drop a bunch of cash, and walk out. Granted that makes you a really shitty investor and the ROI isn't there, but that's totally doable.
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Poker, being based more on skill... is also closer to the market.
So there.
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"gambling and investing are two different things" - Hmmmmmm. I guess it depends on your methodology but even so, profiting from a taken risk is a gamble by definition. Write large, gambling. A venn diagram overlaps a bit.
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IAAL.
a risk based entirely on CHANCE is the legal test for gambling. if there is STRATEGY involved, it is not.
that's why POKER is allowed in US states that have banned gambling. poker involves both chance and strategy.
now, argue among yourselves whether the stock market really involves strategy or not! ;)
if a company makes a good product, and makes money from it, it pays dividends on the stock. so generally a strategy might be to invest in a good company if it makes a good product.
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Single deck blackjack isn't. However multi-deck blackjack effectively is. There are few, if any, casinos which play single deck anymore.
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Only if the game is set up such that you can count cards.
Tip: No online gambling site sets up the game such that you can count cards. They're all multi-deck and reshuffled every hand.
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Yes. An investment has a measurable, predictable, and controllable outcome.
Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that investing in the stock market is
investing. It's not; it's gambling. It's the biggest lie the government tells people
to make people believe that their 401K is actually an investment in their future.
Now, an example of an investment is money spent on one's education. You have
a particular goal, and there are milestones along the way to measure the distance
to said goal.
People who do well in
Trump's Taj Mahal (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that Trump has had an interest in several casinos in the past and says he seeks to be in the casino business again in the future has absolutely nothing to do with his Justice Department outlawing all online gambling.
Nothing whatsoever.
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Certainly fits the profile.
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Well... somehow I doubt this is going to be the straw that breaks the traitor fraud's back.
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I'm pretty sure if they can force him to submit his tax returns and other financials we'll find all sorts of dirty dealings, that's why he won't release them.
Personally I think there should be legislation passed or a Constitutional amendment made (or modified) that requires candidates to submit all that sort of information, among other things. If we had a more rigorous vetting process we might not have had a Trump problem in the first place.
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Trump has a current interest in casinos in Nevada. He lost his interest in NJ casinos. The SC judgement that came down (and lead to this ruling) allowed non-Nevada casinos (like NJ casinos) to compete online.
It's more sour grapes than anything, since it's just killing the online market because his share is decreasing.
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I would never suggest Trump was doing things for rational reasons. He does it out of grievance and spite, which is how he does everything. It's why a certain subset of the population loves him, because theirs is the politics of grievance and spite.
Fortunately, enlightened self interest is starting to take hold, which is why his poll numbers are falling. Some people - some smalls subset of the sm
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Do you need evidence that Donald Trump had financial interests in casinos? It's public record, and he put his name on it in big letters.
Do you need evidence that Donald Trump's Justice Department just made online gambling illegal? It's right up there in the summary. So what do you need evidence for again? Those were to only assertions I made.
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Ah, so you're of the lack of pirates is causing global warming school. Good to know.
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I am of the "if it walks like a duck..." school.
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I didn't make that claim. Read my comment again.
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I just listed two unrelated and totally true facts. You're the one who made the connection.
For now (Score:2, Funny)
Does that include AAA gaming Loot Boxes? (Score:2)
Belgium has already made loot boxes illegal due to them being another form of gambling.
When is the US going to follow?
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When creating a game a trend to ensure the game has something networked well outside the EU and USA will be a way around this control.
To ensure an easy payment system with some global gift cards is ready and well away from controlling political demands of the EU, USA and the CC on a computer game.
Make the game able to run on an OS as software outside any control by a US digital distribution platform and its US CC rules.
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Not just lootboxes, but more generally speaking almost all online gaming. Many online games rely on dice rolls to calculate the outcome of an action. Strike your opponent with a sword? A dice roll determines the amount of damage that you do. This can fall under the broader definition of "online gambling".
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Pay for a EU nation game once and its ok.
Pay for a EU nation game once and then pay for an update and its all legal.
Pay money into a game for an in game currency?
Have to pay for a new version every year?
Pay by the month to rent photography and video software? The user never owns the software? The pro software is a professional "loot box"?
When is converting and using in ga
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That's _quite_ a bit of a stretch there Skippy.
If a sword does 1-4 damage you know you are going to roll a 1,2, 3, or 4. There is no bait-and-switch like there is with real gambling where the outcome can be *nothing.*
Second, no one is complaining about random dice rolls; only about **paying real money** for random loot.
Spending virtual currency that you earn IN-GAME isn't the problem. Spending _actual_ money is, aka Pay-to-Win, IS.
loot boxes (Score:2)
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Essentially all items can be broken down into a base material that doesn't really reflect its value.
You buy a real life loot chest and get a Jackson Pollock painting. You can't really argue that it is only worth the price of the canvass and the paint.
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Consider though that there is more money in existence than there is currency. By quite a long way in fact.
So for a lot of us money is no different than those 1s & 0s that make up an in game item.
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Re: loot boxes (Score:3)
As an avid gambler and video gamer who follows legal trends in both fields, I'd say a quick and dirty test is how easily the value can be officially extracted from the system.
In a casino, I take my chips, walk 30 feet to a counter and get cash. In most online games... There's no official mechanism, just black market exchanges against the ToS. In parts of Asia, you put money in, get points, redeem for a tsochke, sell the tsochke to a store across the street. In an arcade, you put money in, get tickets, redee
Re:What is the reasoning behind anti-gambling (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in the UK.
In my last house (in quite a respectable area of London, famous for very posh schools etc.), the local high street was dead. There were a handful of shops.
What happened is that betting shops moved in. Dozens of them. At one point, six in the same street (which was only short).
The people going in are pissing away their money to fund an addiction. They've now had to introduce laws to reduce the maximum bet on a "fixed odds betting terminal" (fruit machine to you and me) to £2, because it was getting up to £100 for one spin in some instances.
To generalise, the clientele are generally unwanted - dozens and dozens of people who crowd the ATMs on the day when benefits (social security) are paid, draw it out instantly, and spend all day in the betting shops and drinking.
It's not everyone. I have what the British call "a flutter" occasionally, and I'm a mathematician too, so I can do the maths to tell you that you'll never win on average. But you don't really want your population gambling away money unless you own and tax the casinos so heavily that it's beneficial - even then, the social cost is enormous because the people who gamble the most are those that can't afford to.
Las Vegas is tainted because of this for me - I get that it's a part of the US culture in that area, and casinos are different to grubby betting shops, but the clientele are the same.
You'd think you could just tax it to oblivion to counteract any effect, but it does more than just encourage people to get into debt. It's an addiction. There are "gamble aware" programs, where anything advertising gambling has to offer certain functions (i.e. to let people "lock" themselves out of their account for a period of time, to encourage them to "gamble responsibility", and so on). In Italy and other places in Europe, cruise ships (which used to be seen as luxury liners for the rich) are now just regarded with condemnation because they are just used as offshore gambling and drinking dens, usually for British tourists!
The TV is full of adverts for bingo and casinos (online and offline). It's become "the norm" to be swamped in gambling advertising.
There's a big difference between someone playing a lottery once a month (what I'd say was analogous to, say, a village fete tombola) and high-level gambling establishments. Online can be dangerous - it's just a number on a screen.
Gambling will always exist. But it can lead to a degeneration if it's unchecked. I don't get the online/offline distinction but certainly controls need to be in place. The UK ditched most of the legislation about what can apply to be a casino or gambling establishment, and all it means is that the whole high street is just full of gambling places, and websites full of gambling ads.
I've gambled in Las Vegas. I've gambled on cruise ships (but the QE2 was the last of the luxury liners and wasn't gambling-focused at all, it was just a fancy evening dressed up). I know the odds and play games for a living. Hell I have a felt card table, card shoe and poker chips in my lounge as I speak... but even to me, unrestricted or lax gambling legislation has lead to an easily observable phenomenon and every-day news story headline... "My boyfriend stole our benefits to gamble away all our money, and now we're homeless".
I can understand them wanting to limit it. The ruling is a bit arbitrary, but gambling isn't as victimless as you might think. It's not the people losing the money they need to live that are hurt... they are suffering for their own stupidity. It's the knock-on effect on society.
Re:What is the reasoning behind anti-gambling (Score:5, Informative)
Gambling I thought was harmless until I witnessed first hand a buddy of mine go down the tube with online gambling on the early days of online poker. We're talking the age of dial up modem. The guy lost a ton of money, basically wiped out, started running up credit cards, getting cash from cards, just everything to gamble. After first making fun of him, as this progressed we really started to get scared for him. Ended up sabotaging his modem, then his computer, then basically what nowadays they would call an intervention. Though less touchy feelly and more "Dude, you are a *&#$$ dumb*@!#, you better get your @#$@ together, or we're kicking you out of the place."
He got over it, but a couple times years later we'd meet up for a wedding or something where you can gamble, Nassau, Bahamas etc, he would hit the tables and go nuts, lose all his cash. Though he did win $9k one night, and we ended up hiding $8k of that from him until after the trip. By that time he was smart enough to let us take his credit cards away too. But that impulse looks scary and call it what you want, addiction, moral deficit, habit, whatever...its the real deal and if I were running the world I would seek to minimize it as much as possible.
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I feel like I've heard this story many times. Drugs, alcohol, sex, internet. Then there's ones people don't consider addictions, such as work and love.
For most people, they get caught in one of those traps. It ruins them for a while, then they learn not to do it again.
It's definitely worse for them than not having been addicted at all, but I don't think there's a way to learn that lesson without going through the process. If it's not gambling, it'll be one of those other things. It's just unfortunate that f
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Fuck them. And double fuck the baby sitters of the world.
America should not err on the side of caution, but on the side of more freedom. Sorry you've got a personality disorder that causes you to do things to such an extreme that it ruins your well-being. But I am not sorry enough to take the ability to do those things away from everyone who doesn't have such a disorder.
Re:What is the reasoning behind anti-gambling (Score:4, Insightful)
moral deficit
I think it's a quite common attitude that it's a moral deficit so they deserve it really. I mean they should just be stronger.
I am not likely to ever get addicted to gambling because I simply don't get any kind of rush from it. It's very easy to not be addicted to something which to me is a bit boring and expensive.
But there's no moral fortitude in me not gambling.
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Are you voting for prohibition too? Or not yet, because you don't know anyone who had their life ruined by alcohol?
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But using the state's punishment system as a deterrent seems rather drastic to me, especially when you see what the War On Drugs® has done to the United States. And by driving it underground it will promote a certain counterculture aesthetic that might make the activity even more seductive to someone who's already vulnerable.
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Wire gambling is banned due to the high fraud rate.
In particular, it offered nothing like the protections that were offered by the legal casinos against crooked games.
The same about internet video poker. There's no power strong enough to ensure they aren't rigged.
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That's a very moving description of the kinds of problems that gambling can lead to. And you're right: gambling tends to be done - not by the millionaires - but by the people who can least afford it. Hoping for that one big win to heave themselves out of their misery, and thereby putting themselves on the street.
That said, banning activities is (usually) counterproductive, because it just drives them underground. In the case of gambling, would it not be better to treat it the way we do smoking? Prohibit adv
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So your argument is that if a business is undesirable on your street it should be illegal? I bet you wouldn't want a sewage treatment plant next door to you, does that mean you will argue they should be outlawed in UK? This is why there are zoning laws and regulations, to keep businesses from disrupting neighborhood - obviously something failed on your street by allowing six gambling shops to open next to each other.
You argument about addiction has some merit, but you could argue that about alcohol too. Are
So... (Score:2)
...what about lockboxes, then?
A fool and his/her money will soon be parted (Score:1)
Let'em bet it. Let'em win or lose. The mechanism or location used for placing the bet and conducting the transaction should not matter. My father always told me never to bet money that I was not willing to lose. If it's a bad bet, and you don't know it, then you're the fool. And, a fool and his/her money will soon be parted. If you're at a poker table and you don't know who the weakest player at the table is, then it's you! Same holds when you're doing things on the internet.
This whole thing about re
But why? (Score:2)
I've never understood why gambling is so much of a controlled substance here in the US. I can buy scratch tickets at the gas station, pull tabs at the bar, and nobody ever gets raided for playing poker.... but for some reason every few years there seems to be some big gambling scare. I've always kind of assumed it was just marketing to get people to go to Vegas?
Somebody enlighten me.
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A lot of it is morality laws, but there is also a very important reason - regulation and cheating. If the stat wasn't behind the scratch tickets (or auditing them), it would be very easy for them to lie about the odds. And that matters, because although gambling is a bad investment, your expected loss determines how expensive it is as a hobby/fun activity. I mean, if you piss away $50 at a blackjack table, that may be a fun evening for you. If only 1/2 the aces were being dealt, you were cheated. That's
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Those regulations are for the casinos, not the gamblers. If a few of them started cheating, they'd make more money than the rest. But it'll give a lot of customers bad experiences in the process, which drives them away from the activity. All other casinos then make less money. It's a case of the tragedy of the commons, with gamblers being the field and casinos being the herders.
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I've never understood why gambling is so much of a controlled substance here in the US.
Because it's as addicitve and damaging as some controlled substances are.
Humans are manipulatable monkeys for the most part. And gambling organisations have shown they have no qualms about using that to the maximum extent regardless of lives they destroyed. The law in this case doesn't recognise some idealised form of human that doesn't really exist, it actually recognises humans as they are.
Hmm... Who benefits? (Score:2)
Gee, a cynic would say think that the Trump administration did this to benefit brick-and-mortar casino owners, such as, oh, I don't know, Sheldon Adelson.
Who does this benefit? (Score:2)
I would think this benefits physical gambling establishments. Who do we know that owns physical gambling establishments?
Insurance now illegal? (Score:2)
All insurance is based on statistical risk. Is selling insurance online now illegal?
Love /. Headlines (Score:2)
How does a Justice Dept opinion become "US Now Says...Blah, Blah, Blah"? Especially considering that opinion isn't binding, and not representative of the US. The courts will tell us what is and isn't legal when they get a case to respond to. And clearly, it is legal within state lines no matter what Justice says because SCOTUS...wait for it...trumps them.
state lines (Score:2)
Among other definitions ! I found online that a state line is: "a border between one state and another in a country with states"
This would seem to mean that it does not apply to crossing the border between, say, Minnesota and Canada and perhaps again crossing the border between Canada and Alaska.
Maybe Alaska will become the online vegas
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A province is legally considered a state.
Tip: If you think you've come across a totally awesome legal loophole based on using certain words, you haven't come across a loophole and the judge will be very annoyed at your pedantry.
Lootboxes (Score:1)
Wall Street (Score:2)
Draftkings? (Score:2)
what about sites like draft kings, that are being pushed and encouraged by the sport leagues themselves?